Note: The complimentary book offer mentioned during this Webcast has expired.
Learning Objectives
This Webcast provides you with the opportunity to gather best practices for improving demand forecasting and demand planning, while also providing a way to benchmark yourself with best-in-class organizations. Learn why accurate and timely forecasts are critical for success and how they affect the entire enterprise. You will learn:
- How forecasting plays a critical and holistic role in the long-term health and viability of the business.
- Why focusing on data and analytics versus processes and judgments is a critical distinction that all organizations must address.
- Why it is important to not just address symptoms and how to get to the root of the problem.
- What consensus forecasting is and how companies can work to achieve it.
- Why new product forecasting is becoming more important to the future growth of companies.
- How to apply the newest trends and best practices in business forecasting.
Program Content
Hockey superstar Wayne Gretzky once said, “A good hockey player plays the puck where it is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.”
Like any successful athlete, organizations must be able to anticipate the future and act nimbly. In fact, with increasing global competition and changing customer dynamics, accurate forecasting and planning have become critical differentiators between good companies and great ones. Companies across multiple industries are looking at their ability to predict and optimize as a competitive weapon and sustainable advantage. However, creating accurate demand forecasts and selecting optimal scenarios are more easily talked about than accomplished. Most companies find creating accurate plans and forecasts and monitoring key metrics in real- or near-real time to be challenging. This is due, in part, to episodic demand patterns, rapidly changing market dynamics, far-flung operations and supply chains.
Join BetterManagement.com and SAS to hear thought leaders and best-in-class companies discuss the challenges and solutions to achieving real results in advanced forecasting. Industry experts will share results that various companies have achieved by using advanced demand and consensus forecasting technologies in their enterprises. The panelists will also discuss best practices generated from numerous case studies and industry experience.
Participant Level of understanding
This program is intended for participants with an interest in demand forecasting, scenario planning, supply chain management, operations management, inventory management, or financial planning and forecasting.
Who Should Attend
Anyone who is involved in developing and collecting various sales forecasts and managing the development of a corporate consensus forecast in support of the sales and operations planning process. From senior executives to business unit analysts, any individual working to create accurate forecasts and plans who wants to understand how to improve performance and maximize resources using the newest techniques and best practices.
About John T. (Tom) Mentzer, PhD; Wayne Obetz, PhD; and Charles Chase
John T. (Tom) Mentzer, PhD
Tom Mentzer is the Harry J. and Vivienne R. Bruce Chair of Excellence in Business in the Department of Marketing and Logistics at the University of Tennessee. Mentzer is the co-author of Sales Forecasting Management: A Demand Management Approach and founder of the Sales Forecasting Management Forum at the university.
Wayne Obetz, PhD
Wayne Obetz is a Forecasting Manager at Campbell Soup Company. In addition to his experience in consumer package goods, Obetz has forecasting experience in the pharmaceutical industry. His forecasting interests include optimizing forecasts for the lifecycle stage of a product, and identifying and eliminating inefficient forecasting practices.
Charles Chase
As Business Enablement Manager, Charles Chase is the principal architect and strategist for delivering finished goods forecasting solutions to SAS customers to improve their supply chain efficiencies. Chase has more than 26 years of experience in the consumer packaged goods industry and is an expert in sales forecasting, market response modeling, econometrics and supply chain management.
